


Nameless

by Parhelion



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: Crack Fusion, More plot than what, Other, Sex Pollen, Tentacles, Well I asked for plot bunnies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...I don't like flirting with other dimensions, and mad, mindless fluting gives me hives."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nameless

I swiveled to look at Nero Wolfe, who had leaned back in his custom-built chair and narrowed his eyes to slits while he listened to my report about the Gilman case. Done with the details, I told him, "Harold Gilman is a chunk of dynamite looking for a blasting cap. If I bring him back to the office for one of your standard confrontations, there'll be trouble."

"That's obvious." An irritated ripple crossed his features. "Nonetheless, better here than anyplace where he could use innocent lives to fuel his outburst. "

"Sure, but him not blowing would be best of all. You pay me to open your mail, write your checks, drag home your witnesses, and put up with your moods. Every so often, Inspector Cramer or Lieutenant Radcliffe throws me in jail for a day or two, which merely enhances that rough glamour so attractive to women. I don't even mind the duties I won't mention because you might scowl too hard and end up with your face stuck that way. But I don't like flirting with other dimensions, and mad, mindless fluting gives me hives. It seems as if--"

"No rifts," Wolfe snapped. "After all, he's not the mathematician his uncle was." He wiggled a finger at me. "Triggering him before he's ready is how we'll earn our fee."

My brows went up. "That'll come as a surprise to Miss Lake. She thought we were investigating the possible murder of her sister, Mrs. Gilman, by her brother-in-law, Mr. Gilman. Little did she know." But I'd lost this round, and we both knew it. "Do you want me to tell Cramer to bring along Purley Stebbins? It would make seven people in the office this evening, and you're always lecturing me about prime numbers."

"Yes. Do." Wolfe frowned. He glanced at the office clock. The hour was quickly approaching for his afternoon session with all the orchids parked in his greenhouse up on the brownstone's roof. "If that's all?"

It wasn't nearly enough. It also wasn't anything new. Wolfe was Manhattan's best, if laziest, private investigator, but he was also an eccentric genius who knew as much as anyone still sane did about the so-called Elder Mysteries. We'd handled Gilman's kind before and would again. I settled for nodding before I turned to the telephone on my desk.

Six hours later, Gilman blew up right on schedule. At least Cramer and Stebbins had listened to me and come prepared. Unlike Rowcliffe, who's so tangled up in his hatred of the kindred races that he's going to get someone -- and I sure hope it's him -- devoured someday, Cramer concentrates on protecting all the assorted taxpayers of New York City. Still, in spite of their preparations, Cramer and Stebbins were caught off-guard. I wasn't off-guard, but I was surprised. For all he'd like to claim otherwise, so was Wolfe.

Gilman had pulled a soapstone cone, Old One equipment that's absolutely illegal, extremely rare, and insanely risky. He was an idiot. Not being the useful kind of idiot, he then started chanting while he waved the thing at Wolfe, the second biggest danger to him in that office after himself. Meanwhile I was moving and so was Purley. We would be too late.

Wolfe did what he had to. However, he also takes his duties as a host seriously. He somehow shaped the barrage so that Miss Lake and Frank Woodruff weren't in it at all. Cramer, Purley, and I caught the edge but we were warded, me by Wolfe and them by the police sigils they wore over their hearts. That left the orbs feeling something like being dropped into a darkened public swimming pool with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir bellowing out Russian hymns point-blank while ten thousand amphibious fireflies buzzed us. A couple of hard blinks to clear the daze, and Purley and I could get moving again.

Gilman, on the other hand, had pretty much gotten what he'd meant to give and then some. Even while we tackled him, he had already dropped the cone and was moaning as he pawed frantically at nothing in particular. To my annoyance, there was also plenty of spittle involved.

Wolfe ignored all this. The rules of hospitality were still in force. Though his hand-tailored suit bulged and fluttered weirdly while he did it, he reached out to pluck and consume the orchid from the silver vase on his desk with a familiar, irritated air before chasing it down with the dregs of his latest glass of beer. The sight was no scarier than watching your Aunt Hortense demolish a teacake at her bridge club after overhearing criticisms of her flower arrangements for the harvest altars.

Likely as a result, Miss Lake kept to her seat without fainting, and Woodruff's hand only shook a little as he mixed himself a Scotch and soda over at the drinks cart.

"Those loathsome, abandoned, oozy monoliths," Gilman crooned raggedly to Purley. "Floating azure lights in the indescribable, alien angles of hideous, coral-clad doorways. They will sing, each to each. They will also sing to me, fa, la, la…" Once he'd caroled through a few more atonal bars, he tried eating the right cuff of his suit coat.

"Okay, okay," Purley told him. "Let's go find you a padded cell where you can try filling me with more nameless dread, Buster." I gave him a hand getting Gilman outside to the uniforms that had been waiting around the front stoop just in case.

Meanwhile, Wolfe must have asked the client and her fiancée to return later for their final report. I met them in the hall as they donned their hats and coats, and she was too busy chattering nervously with Woodruff about what else her late sister might've inherited from their grandfather, the Antarctic explorer, for me to think the evening had permanently scarred her. He was wondering if they should search the Gilmans' house. I was thinking the neighbors would get there first with kerosene.

Cramer had kept himself busy by getting the soapstone cone into a N.Y.P.D. bag marked with the Elder Sign. When I walked into the office, he was just straightening up, his round, red face redder than usual.

"I hate all this esoteric crap," he growled.

"You are wise to be wary of ancient natural history," Wolfe told him. "However, that could have gone much worse."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, nothing but a greasy smear where a square block of Thirty-fifth street used to be because some character twirled a chunk of rock counterclockwise instead of clockwise. I'm all cheered up." Cramer was rolling around the cigar he'd taken from his pocket, rather than squeezing it as if he wished it was Wolfe's neck, so he was at a simmer instead of on the boil. "Don't think I won't be back here tomorrow right at ten with a fistful of forms that need to be filled out and signed."

"My front door will be off the chain," Wolfe said. Then he levered himself up from his chair and asked, "Now, If you'll excuse me?"

Cramer snorted, but he also waved the cigar at Wolfe before he stuck it into his mouth and chewed on it.

Moving faster than you'd predict from his bulk, Wolfe was out the door to the office. A few seconds later, you could hear the noises of the elevator starting up toward the roof.

Only Cramer was left behind to glower at me. I shrugged at him and went over to my desk to put away my notebook and pen.

It was a surprise when Cramer asked, "Will he be okay?"

"I'm going to tell him you asked that." But then I relented enough to answer the question. "A couple of extra hours with the orchids will be a big help."

"You?"

Both Wolfe and I pay our taxes, so his concern wasn't entirely unprecedented. "Sure. Although if I keep having to join these cultic rituals of his, I'm considering getting some hooded robes tailored to fit. Yellow silk, I'd imagine, although that's not my best color and might clash with the petals. What do you think?"

"Smartass," he told me. Then he snatched up the confinement bag and marched out.

Once I made sure Cramer found his way out through the front door, I could stop stalling for the sake of appearances. After a brief pause in the kitchen to have a word with Fritz about cleaning up the office and leaving a midnight snack, I made the climb to the roof. Given my nerves, it may have gone a little faster than usual. No one was there to get in my way; as usual after dark, Theodore was locked into his bedroom, safe behind the symbols that kept the orchids from coaxing him toward being the sort of guy no longer interested in visiting his sister over in Jersey.

I will freely admit I stopped short and grinned to hide my relief once I got into the warm room.

Wolfe had rearranged a bunch of the orchid pots into a pattern on the floor and then crouched down between them, the worst garden ornament you could ever imagine. Since I'm both used to the sight and a modern kind of guy, my only real shock was aesthetic. Even that was weakened by other associations.

As was always the case when this happened, the orchids were swaying in no wind that really existed in any plane I knew. They somehow seemed to murmur together in voices too high to be heard. The greenhouse was illuminated by their abnormal, eldritch glow. An indescribable, decadent scent that I've learned to know well pervaded the air. I had to fight not to sneeze. He'd called upon them to replenish what had been spent tonight, all right, and would need a willing Vessel. This might take a while.

Given that Wolfe had already peeled off his suit coat and yellow silk shirt, he was doing some swaying of his own whether he wanted to or not. But somehow he made it look a lot more crabby than eldritch. Even if he was Illyrian race-kin to R'lyeh, no mundane _homo sapiens_ was ever pulling ahead of Nero Wolfe in the human nature marathons.

Noticing my raised eyebrows, he said, "You know I dislike the metabolic cost of such displays."

"Take this as an excuse to eat the pie left over from dinner," I told him. "I mean to enjoy a piece or two myself when we're done. And Fritz is making sandwiches. That should be fun."

"True," he muttered. His limbs had already reached out and were drawing me in, but I think it was the thought of pie that made him add politely, "I hope you weren't forced to cancel an evening out."

"Hell, no." I snorted. "If you'll remember, I was the one who warned you Gilman would blow. If you'd only bet me, using my odds, that I'd be staying in tonight, and not in order to read a magazine, I could've won--"

Although I had to shut up then, a rippling of tentacles let me know my point had scored. No matter how temporarily, it's always fun to get in the last word.


End file.
